Autor: Dumont, Gérard-Francois

Buch: Europa stirbt vor sich hin

Titel: Europa stirbt vor sich hin

Stichwort: Anthropologie des Liberalismus; Individuum, totale Autonomie - Anarchie, juridischer Positivismus, Konventionen, Verträge; Gewalt des Stärkeren; Reduktion der Vernunft

Kurzinhalt: The human individual is regarded as totally autonomous, and this in two senses: ... Human reason ... is reduced to measuring the utility of such and such conduct. It is no longer the faculty that enables each man to discern the true and the false, ...

Textausschnitt: Liberalism: First an Anthropology

65a As we begin our development of this theme, it is appropriate to recall clearly that the liberal tradition is characterized above all by an anthropology that exalts man as an individual, his sacred right to private property, his individual liberties. It is foremost liberty that characterizes man.1 (Fs)

65b The human individual is regarded as totally autonomous, and this in two senses: one may be called more subjective; the other more objective. In the first sense, man and he alone is totally master of his existence; he does not depend on anybody, nor is he responsible for another except to the degree that his sovereign will consents in letting itself be determined by someone different from himself. Whence the second sense: this sovereign will, this liberty without limits, will determine in a totally autonomous fashion what is good or bad, what has value and what is a value for the individual in question. The moral norm will strictly coincide with the determination of the subjective will - the norm necessarily reflecting the special interest of the individual. The individual thus ends by erecting his own conduct into a moral norm.2 (Fs) (notabene)

65c We see right away that this conception of liberty entails the precursory sign of anarchism: the "law" which the totally subjective will accepts is connected with nothing else than the will which positively determines its content. Thus the liberal tradition paradoxically leads to juridical positivism's inclination always to sanction the force of the strongest. There is no longer place for reference to objective realities, including other individuals whom each individual should take into account. Human reason is not excluded, but it is mutilated; it is reduced to being a faculty for comparing the advantages or inconveniences of such and such a decision, it is reduced to measuring the utility of such and such conduct. It is no longer the faculty that enables each man to discern the true and the false, the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and to consent to one or the other by a voluntary act of free assent. The idea that, thanks to reason, men could better understand what they are, dialogue and discover the foundations of their sociability has hardly any bearing here. Reason is at the service of individual interests; it is no longer open to universality. It is no longer the faculty thanks to which men can comprehend what distinguishes them and what brings them together. (Fs) (notabene)

66a One is also prevented from finding for sociability any other but an individual foundation - something really contradictory. Deprived of all reference to any other thing but their liberty, if individuals want to live together, they have no other resource but to have recourse to conventions, occasional consensus, contracts. Issuing only from anarchic wills, their declarations will express only the interests of the contracting parties. Man's rights themselves will not escape this ravaging positivism. If in such a society and at such and such an epoch of history we agree one day to proclaim them or proclaim about them, why would we prevent ourselves from modifying their content or meaning to fit our interests? Now the latter change according to the circumstances of time and place and according to alliances that can always be terminated because they are based on utility and self interest. In brief, the trend of liberalism ends in aporia in the ancient meaning of the word, that is a dead end. Starting with the axiom developed by Locke, at the beginning men are free and equal; they end with practical consequences that make it impossible to think of and will liberty and equality as values for all men. The only thing that remains is the "legitimating" discourse that presents the original axiom less as a horizon than as a mirage. (Fs)